


Void

by katkrap



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-06-24
Updated: 2012-06-24
Packaged: 2017-11-08 11:52:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/442919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katkrap/pseuds/katkrap
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Vignette pieces done based on Episode 1x12: all these vignettes take place during the period of time between the end of the Republic City War and the events at the end of the episode.  Major Spoilers for episode 1x12: Endgame.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Korra

Everything is different now.

She knows that the moment she steps foot on the stony shores of her homeland.  The rock doesn’t respond to her touch, give under the pressure of her foot as if to say, _I am your own.  Command me_.  It is cold.  Unyielding.

Silent.

Everyone wants to touch her.  To hold her and say it is alright.  She does not let them, content to sit alone, knees held to her chest as if holding them tight enough will keep her from trembling.  She wants no one to hold her save herself.

The exception to this rule is her father.  He runs to her, his daughter, and embraces her like a lionbear.  He smells of leather and sea prunes and their warm, tired hut and the ocean.  She had forgotten how much she missed the smell of the ocean, of ice and sea salt.  He strokes her hair, speaks her name softly and tells his daughter everything will be alright.  She wants to believe him.  She wants to be a child again, to believe safety was as simple as sleeping on the furs between her mother and father and that it was nothing more than a bad dream.  All of this.

But Republic City has changed her.

She does not let her father hold her again.

She cannot put into words why it is she does not want to be held, to have an arm around her shoulders. There are too many and yet not enough words for what it is.  She can still feel a hand on her throat, the thumb on her forehead.  It’s imprinted on her body still, like an invisible weight added to her body.  Or, perhaps, more like an absence.  A void that cannot, will not be filled.


	2. Mako

It was an accident.

The others were packing, gathering their things for the journey southward.  He was speaking with her.  At her.  She didn’t respond.  When she did, it was limited to syllables.  A string of words, if he was lucky.  The trade winds rushed over Air Temple Island, sending a mess of brown hair into aquamarine eyes.  He smiled at her, moved to push the hair back from her face.

He felt it, lightning all up his arms and the back of his neck.  He could see her body change.  Her eyes dialated to near-solid disks of black and her tan skin went ashen.  He’d caught her as her knees went out, as the screaming began.

He shouted for Tenzin, for Bolin, anyone.  It was Lin who was at his side in that instant.

Korra’s body was turning in on itself, locking itself into a tight wad of muscle.  The screaming didn’t stop.

Tenzin pried him off of her, told his brother to remove him from the plaza.  He didn’t have to.  Mako ran.

He ran down all seven flights of stairs.  He ran through the orchard, down the stony path to the shoreline.  He let himself fall onto the ground, half-supporting himself with one hand.  It would be several minutes before Bolin could find him.  Ask what was wrong.

Mako couldn’t look at him.  “It was an accident.”


	3. Asami

There is no room here for her to mourn.  She knows that now.

Little is said when they gather her father.  Less is said when he is taken away.

Bolin smiles for her, makes conversation when he knows she is able to return the social exchange.  Surprisingly, he seems to understand her need for silence.

Mako is nothing but silence.  And distance.

She understands, but does not want to understand.

Loss tugs at her ribs like a hooked blade, pulling her in two, and yet she feels obligated to soldier on.  Perhaps that is testament to her father’s lessons.  Perhaps it is denial, the phantom pain of a severed limb on a family tree.  She does not speak of this pain, she does not admit that she, too, _wants_.

She wants _not_ to be alone, to not sit in the silence of her own room and grieve behind closed doors.  To see her grief ignored and passed over.

But her grief seems so small next to all this. 

An avatar has fallen.  What grief should exist beyond this?


	4. Lin

The water is cold.  And it is still not boiling.

She cannot sleep.  Night is the only time she will leave her room.  There are fewer people to encounter.  Fewer conversations to be had.  And all of these conversations she wishes to remain unspoken.  In some small, selfish way, she is glad for the fuss everyone seems to be making over Korra.

No one fusses over her.

In that same moment, she feels guilty.  She craves distraction again.

She raids Katara’s cupboards, and—as promised—there is a wide array of herbs and teas.  She looks over the cupboard a moment then begins grabbing the tins.  She sniffs and considers the tins in turn, adds them to the small wire basket.  When she is satisfied, she picks up the basket to return it to the empty pot.

She notices it then.  It is not the first time, but it strikes her in such a way that she feels the cold shock run through her body, turn her arms numb.

She cannot feel the metal.

She cannot feel the ground, the walls, the ice caverns below, the footsteps of the household, the heartbeats of everyone in a two-room radius.  And suddenly she cannot breathe.

She nearly spills the mesh basket all across the counter, spoiling the blend of tea.  A hand catches her arm, steadies her.  She looks up into gray eyes and knows, at once, that she is unmade.  It could have been anyone.  Anyone.  But instead, it is _him_.

Tenzin smiles, tells her she should be more careful.

She doesn’t respond.

He asks if she is alright.

She tells him she is.

He thanks her for all she’s done.  For Korra.  For him.  For his family.

She doesn’t say what they are both thinking; that is has been for so little.  That the ground offers up so much silence for nothing.  The children were still endangered.  The family was still captured.  In her final act of defiance, she accomplished nothing.

He seems to sense this, rests a hand on her shoulder.  She stares at it.  She does not think she can look at him.  Not now.  She waits for him to speak, but it does not come.  Instead, she is pulled to him, circled with his arms.  She realized what her bending would have told her from the start.  He is trembling.

He, too, is afraid.

Somehow, in some twisted way, this is _comforting_.  She feels terrible thinking it, but there it is.  And for a moment, she feels less ashamed by her own shortcomings.

He thanks her again.  Tells her he owes her the lives of his family.  She tries to explain it again, that she did nothing, but he does not let her.  He will not hear it.  He holds her at an arm’s length, and when he looks at her, there are tears in his eyes.

“Never will I know a more loyal friend, Lin.”

She smiles.  Does not let him see the tears spiking at the backs of her eyes.  “Same could be said of y…”

They both turn silent.  Somewhere in the complex, there is screaming.  There is a waking nightmare and shaking hands and…

“Ikke,” Tenzin says.

She gives him a tired smile.  “Go.”

He does.

She is alone in a small kitchen.  The water is boiling, so she brews the tea.

Her mother loved tea; claimed she was taught brewing by the best.  Lin would like to believe this, that she is a student of the greats. 

That she is still a master of something.


End file.
